Muslims against the Muslim League The popularity of the Muslim League and its idea of Pakistan has largely been measured in terms of its success in achieving the end goal – creation of a sovereign state in the contiguous Muslim majority regions of North West and North East India. This has led to an oversight of various Muslim leaders and organizations which were opposed to this demand, predicating their opposition to the League on its understanding of the history and ideological content of the Muslim qaum (nation). This volume addresses the gap in academic literature by taking stock of multiple narratives about Muslim identity formation in the context of debates about Partition, historicizes those narratives, and reads them in the light of the larger political milieu of the period in which they were being shaped and debated. Focusing on the critiques of the Muslim League, its concept of the Muslim qaum, and the political settlement demanded on its behalf, this volume goes beyond the machinations at the level of high politics to how the movement for Pakistan inspired a contentious, influential conversation on the definition of the Muslim qaum. This volume adds to the canon of works on the history of the Muslim League, Jinnah’s politics and the creation of Pakistan. It focuses on the voices of dissent coming from political leaders, religious organizations, ‘ulemas and activists who offered, with varying degrees of success, alternative visions and critiques of the idea of Pakistan. Ali Usman Qasmi is at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences in Lahore University of Management Sciences, Pakistan. He did his PhD from the South Asia Institute of Heidelberg University. He was a Newton Fellow for Post-Doctoral research at Royal Holloway College, University of London. He is also the author of Questioning the Authority of the Past: The Ahl al-Qur’an Movements in the Punjab, and The Ahmadis and the Politics of Religious Exclusion in Pakistan, which won the Karachi Literature Festival Peace Prize in 2015. Megan Eaton Robb is at the Department of Religious Studies in University of Pennsylvania, USA. She completed her DPhil from the Oriental Institute of University of Oxford. She was previously a Junior Research Fellow at Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. Her research interests include gender and religion in South Asia, history of Islam in South Asia, and Hindi and Urdu public spheres. Muslims against the Muslim League Critiques of the Idea of Pakistan Edited by Ali Usman Qasmi Megan Eaton Robb University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, vic 3207, Australia 4843/24, 2nd Floor, Ansari Road, Daryaganj, Delhi – 110002, India 79 Anson Road, #06–04/06, Singapore 079906 Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107166639 © Cambridge University Press 2017 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2017 Printed in India A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Qasmi, Ali Usman, editor. | Robb, Megan Eaton, editor. Title: Muslims against the Muslim League : critiques of Pakistan / edited by Ali Usman Qasmi, Megan Eaton Robb. Description: New York : Cambridge University Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017001520 | ISBN 9781107166639 (hardback) Subjects: LCSH: Pakistan movement. | Muslims--Political activity--India--History--20th century. | Islam and politics--India--History--20th century. | India--Politics and government--20th century. | BISAC: HISTORY / Asia / India & South Asia. Classification: LCC DS480.45 .M849 2017 | DDC 954.03/59--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017001520 ISBN 978-1-107-16663-9 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Contents Acknowledgements vii Introduction 1 Ali Usman Qasmi and Megan Eaton Robb 1. Maulana Husain Ahmad Madani and the Jami‘at ‘Ulama-i- Hind: Against Pakistan, against the Muslim League 35 Barbara D. Metcalf 2. The Partition Conundrum: Perspectives, Experiences and Ambiguities from qasbahs in India 65 M. Raisur Rahman 3. Choudhary Rahmat Ali and his Political Imagination: Pak Plan and the Continent of Dinia 82 Tahir Kamran 4. Differentiating between Pakistan and Napak-istan: Maulana Abul Ala Maududi’s Critique of the Muslim League and Muhammad Ali Jinnah 109 Ali Usman Qasmi 5. Advising the Army of Allah: Ashraf Ali Thanawi’s Critique of the Muslim League 142 Megan Eaton Robb 6. The Illusory Promise of Freedom: Mian Iftikhar-ud-Din and the Movement for Pakistan 169 Ali Raza 7. Visionary of Another Politics: Inayatullah Khan ‘al-Mashriqi’ and Pakistan 190 Markus Daechsel 8. Nonviolence, Pukhtunwali and Decolonization: Abdul Ghaffar Khan and the Khuda’i Khidmatgar Politics of Friendship 220 Safoora Arbab vi CONTENTS 9. Islam, Communism and the Search for a Fiction 255 Ammar Ali Jan 10. Muslim Nationalist or Nationalist Muslim? Allah Bakhsh Soomro and Muslim Politics in 1930s and 1940s Sindh 285 Sarah Ansari 11. Dancing with the Enemy: Sikander Hayat Khan, Jinnah and the Vexed Question of ‘Pakistan’ in a Punjabi Unionist Context 311 Newal Osman 12. Religion between Region and Nation: Rezaul Karim, Bengal, and Muslim Politics at the End of Empire 338 Neilesh Bose 13. ‘The Pakistan that is going to be Sunnistan’: Indian Shi‘a Responses to the Pakistan Movement 350 Justin Jones 14. The Baluch Qaum of Kalat State: Challenging the Ideological and Territorial Boundaries of Pakistan 381 Abdul Majeed Contributors 399 Index 403 Acknowledgements The idea for this book project was initially conceived in August 2014. It has taken more than two years of work to bring it to completion at a time when India and Pakistan prepare to celebrate seventy years of Independence. This timely contribution, we hope, will enable a sombre reflection on the critically important concepts of Indian nationalism and Muslim nationhood, and the continued relevance of these debates and ideas in the contemporary period. We would like to acknowledge the support of several institutions and individuals who enabled the publication of this volume of collected essays. We offer special thanks to the Newton Alumni Fund granted by The Royal Society and The British Academy, who sponsored Ali’s stay in Oxford and enabled our collaboration on this project. Also thanks to the Proposals and Grants Committee of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Lahore University of Management Sciences, the Oriental Institute of the University of Oxford and New College, Oxford. We are very grateful to Qudsiya Ahmed, Anwesha Rana and Aditya Majumdar at Cambridge University Press, for their support and encouragement during the publication process. We also offer thanks to Francis Robinson, Chris Moffat, Hafeez Jamali, Elisabeth Leake, Daniel Haines, Ilyas Chattha, Pippa Virdee, Virinder Singh Kalra, Yasmin Khan, Iftikhar H. Malik, Moin Nizami, Elizabeth Chatterjee, Eve Tignol, and Sneha Krishnan for commenting on drafts of the chapters. We thank Ishtiaq Ahmed for putting us in contact with Shamsul Islam, who provided a copy of his book to us at a short notice. Kevin Greenbank went beyond the call of duty to provide us with high resolution images of pamphlets from the archival holdings of the University of Cambridge’s Centre of South Asian Studies, in addition to granting permission to reproduce them in this volume. Osama Ahmed is to be thanked for his help in preparing bibliographies for some of the chapters. To Jack Clift and Charlotte Thornton, we are extremely grateful for their meticulous reading of each chapter to point out errors and suggest corrections, typographical and otherwise. Introduction Ali Usman Qasmi and Megan Eaton Robb Speaking at a huge gathering in Delhi during the 1940s, Ata Ullah Shah Bukhari, the fiery leader of Majlis-i-Ahrar, a religio-political organization known for its radical anti-colonialism and as an ally of the Indian National Congress, narrated an anecdote. A mother gave 4 annas (a quarter of a rupee) to her son, Muhammad Ali, to fetch kerosene from the shop around the corner. The lad went to the shop and asked for 4 annas worth of kerosene. The shopkeeper filled the oval shaped clay pot to the brim. ‘Won’t you give me a chunga with this?’ asked the boy.1 The shopkeeper replied, ‘The pot is full; where should I put the chunga?’ The boy upended the pot and pointed towards its opening. The shopkeeper obliged and put the chunga there. The boy went home and handed over the pot to his mother. Surprised that there was hardly any oil in the pot, the mother asked, ‘Beta [my son] Muhammad Ali, only this much oil for 4 annas?’ Muhammad Ali boasted: ‘No mother, look there is a chunga with it as well.’ A wry smile appeared on Bukhari’s face as he concluded in front of the massive audience, held spellbound by his oratory: ‘This Pakistan triumphantly presented by Muhammad Ali Jinnah as a solution for Muslims who are a quarter of India’s population is also like this chunga.’2 This was Bukhari’s rhetorical contribution to the debate on Pakistan. More seriously, he talked about the impracticality of the two wings of the proposed Muslim state being separated by thousands of miles of an ‘enemy territory’ of 1 Pronounced chūnga: a token gift of little value, such as candy, that shopkeepers used to give to customers.